Leeming SHS: Day something: 19 October

Every day when I write the blog, I have to sort out what happened today and what happened some other day, long gone -- every day seems so full of events.

The day begins with a detour to a tyre place to drop off a sacred tyre (i.e. it was holey) for repair. It had gone flat the night before, and two students, collared for the sin of laziness the previous day, were deputized to change it out.

At the pits, we, oh, I don't know, do something. Ah, I know, I fix the fans. The fans that cool the battery pack mysteriously stopped working some time during scrutineering yesterday. I follow the wiring and discover that some of the wiring has popped off the switches -- the sawtooth which is used to prop up the array had gotten an excessively vigorous workout during ingress/egress trials, and has pushed the connectors off.

John Treen comes down to the pits. We mount his telemetry transmitter board in the car, successfully receive data from the motor controller and, as far as we know, transmit it via Bluetooth. We can't actually tell the last bit because John's laptop has had a bit of a software mishap, and is slightly confused with respect to matters bluetoothy. But we know it's receiving the data, because it's logging it to a USB thumbdrive.

We leave the pits early today, returning to the Alatai. John and I work on interfacing his telemetry board to the Sungroper current sense board, which involves mucking about with optocouplers and Zener diodes and such like.

Then it's off to Parliament House for tonight's reception for team members. We think. This is my third Challenge, and on the previous two all team members were welcome. But this time, it's limited to eight people per team. So the remaining fifteen of us get back on the bus, and instead go on impromptu tour of scenic Darwin. Sights include the beach at Fannie Bay, which probably should have a sign saying "Fannie Bay. Yes, we've heard all the stupid jokes. Shut up."

Back to the hotel room, and tacos for dinner. Pranks are played on the CB radio, mostly, it must be said, by our esteemed team leader. Monty Python is quoted, and The Goodies, and anything else we can think of. It's amazing what's funny when you're fatigued and somewhat sleep-deprived.

-- Doug, Leeming Hammerhead